Thank you for writing back.
I totally agree that the communication should be much faster.
At the same time, if there is a compliance related issue, this needs to be addressed internally.

You had someone sent money to us on your behalf.
You know that person, we do not.

We need to be sure its not a fraud.
And we need to conduct our own internal investigation for the same.

ID's, banks, and transfers cannot be investigated within 24 hours. These things can take sometime.

From what I see, it took a total of 5 days -- including we asking for documentations, you providing it, and we running it on net verify.
We completed the ID verification in 2 days after you submitted it.

This is most certainly a compliance issue and I think it was resolved rather quickly -- given your history with us.

In other cases, we write a bank check and mail it to the person who sent us those funds and that can take 10 to 15 business days.

Nonetheless, we continuously monitor such support issues to make sure we perform better. There is always room for improvement.

Thank you for writing.
For us to credit your account, money needs to come from your account. We cannot and do not accept payments on your behalf. It is a classic AML flag and we absolutely need to make sure it is safe for us to credit such amounts.

There is no definite timeline for this verification because it depends on number of factors:

Contacting our bank to investigate any fraud

Ask customers to provide additional details

Have that third party verify their own id on igot

Run such ID's on Netverify to make sure it is not fraud

As you can see, multiple parties are involved when system flags you for sending money from a third party, it cannot be expedited.

The forum post does not expedite this process at all.
Internal process and investigation is the only way to resolve such discrepancies.

Please make sure you send us money from your verified bank account to avoid such situations.

Hi Mitch,
We provide a localized service in countries we operate.
Meaning, you do not pay international wire fee to send or receive funds from an overseas exchange. The wire fee along from Australia costs $22 to $25. Incoming wires are $12.

Since we provide a much convenient way to fund and withdraw your funds, we charge a little extra for buy orders but also pay a little extra for sell orders.

But did you follow them completely? Problem is, people think Bitcoin exchanges need zero compliance and they should not have to verify their identity or provide further verification so we, as an exchange can meet our AML / CTF and KYC obligations. igot is the buyer and seller of your Bitcoin. Of course we are required to make sure the transaction is safe for us. The fraud is non-existent as well. Its totally different experience to own a couple of Bitcoin and run an exchange. Completely different.

You are based in Europe. Your money comes from Australia, ID's are Australian. That most definitely flags you on the system. If you are based in Europe, use SEPA payments to igot instead of depositing money in Australia.

Its not about taking customer's money and holding it. Bitcoin is very volatile. We allow you to buy and sell Bitcoin instantly so you do not lose on the value, but to meet our legal obligations, we need to conduct KYC and meet our Anti Money Laundering obligations. We only place restrictions on withdrawals while we do that. I am sure most of you here can appreciate that locking in your Bitcoin price is crucial to your trades.

Bitcoin has great use case for Remittance. Making money movement faster and easier. But guess what? You and I are not the only ones thinking that. Scammers, drug dealers, terrorists and many such people have the same idea. You are looking at it from a consumer point of view, we are looking at from an exchange point of view. Your obligation to store or report data is almost zero, while we may be subject to a much rigorous reporting system in future. Moving money should be easy, but only when you meet all the requirements. If we don't do our job at verifying users and country A, B and C - we're basically supporting money laundering. We're not interested in that. There is more to money laundering law than you realize. And as an exchange, we have to make sure we are not being used for it.

If you are not happy because we need to be compliant, I am not sure what to add to it.

I am just giving you possible reasons.
As for allowing you to buy and sell easily without restrictions - its simple. Bitcoin is volatile. We at least allow you to lock in your price.
For withdrawals, we need verification and this is clearly listed on the site even before you send any dollars to us.

Thank you for all your comments - positive and negative.
For us to do better, we require all kinds of feedback.

First of all, please accept my sincere apologies for the ones that have been waiting for their withdrawals, for whatever reasons.

I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the issues posted here and resolve it for you.

BTC pending withdrawal for some people - if the account is in Review. Some of the reasons are:

As an exchange, we have to make sure that we are meeting our legal obligations.

We have to make sure that there are no, or at the very least, minimum fraudulent transactions on the system

We have to make sure we’re not giving away Bitcoin to a fraudulent person who used someone else’s bank account to fund their account

We have to make sure that Bitcoin leaves the system only when we are satisfied that the person withdrawing it has not used fake names, fraudulent documentation, and is the rightful owner of the bank account the funds came from

We have to make sure that there are no discrepancies on one’s account - such as multiple IPs, excessive failed login attempts and more.

If our bank has contacted us about potential fraud, we need to wait for the issue to be resolved between the bank, the account holder in question, and us

We have to make sure that we are in compliance at all times

1) The person with 13 BTC withdrawal. We’re not going to comment on specifics of the case, but the account was in review because of the discrepancies, excessive failed login attempts and more.
The explanation was offered to the customer and they have agreed that the suspicion we had were reasonable. We’re working with them to understand the situation and resolve it of course.

2) The verification process.
We’re an exchange and we need to meet our AML and KYC obligations. KYC is not and cannot be done in matter of minutes or hours. If you live in country A, provide identity from country B, and deposit money from country C - it is a huge red flag. That to us is high risk and we will need to take our time to throughly review their documentations and other information provided.
To add to that, we cannot accept expired identity documentations either. The documents have to be valid and has to be current, including your utility bills.
Compliance is a very important step and we ask our users not to get impatient.

3) Even if you are at Level 2 and the system flags you for whatever reason, we need to make sure we attend to that. We cannot fast track certain compliance requirements at all. Bank frauds, BPAY frauds, and Bitcoin frauds are way too common for us, or any exchange to ignore. The risk is bigger than the reward. We’re not in this business for fraudulent people to move money anonymously. We require full disclosure from our users.

4) Room for improvement - Can we do better? Of course! There is always room for improvement, opportunity to learn, and serve you better. We appreciate your feedback.
We will make it our mission to expedite what we can to make sure there are no delays.

There is no excuse for us to delay legitimate withdrawals and for the legitimate delays, please accept our apologies.
At the same time, we have to make sure that the fraudulent ones don’t get away with free Bitcoin.
Its bad for us, its bad for the victim, and ultimately, its bad for Bitcoin.

If your account is experiencing excessive delays - I ask you to email compliance@igot.com to ask why.
If your account is in review and is being investigated, we will not be able to give you all details upfront (so we don’t tip off the fraudulent guys), but will provide a timeframe.

For any other inquiries, please open a Support Ticket, or email hello@igot.com.

Once again, please accept my sincere apologies for delays on legitimate withdrawals. Rest assured, we will resolve this for you right away.

Hello there,
First of all, we're an exchange that needs to meet certain legal requirements.

If your passport has expired, you are in Belgium, and money comes from a bank in Australia, it automatically flags your account.

For us to resolve this, it takes time.
There are number of factors in play.

We need to understand who you are?
Are we breaking any Money Laundering laws?
And what is the right solution to approve such accounts - legally.

If there are several flags like this on an account, our compliance need to spend the time to review all information available.

I understand you are in a rush, but compliance issues cannot be taken lightly. We need to be able to make sure this is not fraud.
You know who you are, but we don't and this is what we're trying to ensure.

Support tickets are usually responded in 24 hours, but if your ticket needs attention from compliance, it can and will take longer.

We cannot expedite the compliance process under any circumstances.

Please open 1 support ticket to make it easier for you to track it and for us to respond to.

Hello Guys,
Its clear we need to do a better job here.
There is no denying that.
With series of changes at igot and its banking partners, we've had a lot to adjust in past weeks. Unfortunately, this affected some withdrawals in Singapore and in Hong Kong.
We've made some changes internally and expect to fast track everyone starting this week.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Daily withdrawal limits and way to lift them is clearly listed on the site. Its very easy to lift those restrictions and withdraw as many as 500 BTC a day.

As for your login problem -- it seems like you're trying to login from the SIGN UP FORM on homepage.
Many users do that.

Please use SIGN IN from top right to login.

Getting to Level 2 is pretty straight forward and easy.
We are simply not interested in running yet another 'anonymous Bitcoin exchange'.
Bitcoin may have started like that, but we think that is not the right way going forward. If you see the evolving economy of Bitcoin, you will notice 99% of the exchanges do require to meet KYC and AML policies laid out by the Government around the world.

We certainly do not want to be in middle of some big (or small) money laundering operations that fund illegal trades such as drug trafficking, and terrorism to name few.

Rest assured, igot is not here to scam you or anyone else. That's not why we started this platform.

We are known for our extra precautions (sometimes criticized) and many users get frustrated, which we understand and listen to.

But due to number of BPAY frauds in Australia, we have to be very careful with every account. We've blocked thousands of dollars worth of fraud by enforcing strict KYC.

What these scammers really do is use BPAY to fund igot, then withdraw Bitcoin.
Once the Bitcoin is sent, they’re gone. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.

As an exchange, it is our job to make sure this doesn’t happen.
When this happens, the following happens:

The scammer has gotten away with free Bitcoin
The victim (who’s bank account or card was used) is out of money
igot then needs to make sure the money is given back to the victim, affecting our bottom line
Banks see this as high risk business and shuts down Bitcoin related bank accounts

We see a lot of classic frauds every day and you, as our user have to understand that we need to be extra careful.

We’ve seen so many cases where:

Scammer scammed someone’s bank account and took of with Bitcoin
Some unsuspected old people have had their life savings or major portion of it taken away
Some kids use their parent’s bank account to buy Bitcoin without understanding the risks (and they’re under 18 years of age)
Some people have had their identity and cards stolen from their mailbox while they were away

As we grow, we are constantly reviewing our policies to make sure we're able to eliminate fraud and lift limits on most accounts instantly.

As part of our voluntary obligation, we meet the AML and KYC policies laid by the government. This is good for Bitcoin ecosystem in general and since Bitcoin is not yet regulated, we think self regulated exchanges like ourselves are doing the right thing (legally speaking).

We look forward to your feedback. Please feel free to email us on hello@igot.com.
We will be happy to help.